Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Galatians 4:31 - 4:31
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Gal_4:31 is usually looked upon as the keystone, as the final result of the previous discourse. “Applicat historiam et allegoriam, et summam absolvit brevi conclusione,” Luther, 1519. But so taken, the purport of Gal_4:31 appears to express far too little, and to be feeble, because it has been already more than once implied in what precedes (see Gal_4:26; Gal_4:28). We do not get rid of this incongruity, even if with Rückert we prefer the reading ἡμεῖς δέ , also approved by Hofmann (see the crit. notes), and assume the tacit inference: “consequently the inheritance cannot escape us, expulsion does not affect us.” For, after the whole argument previously developed, any such express application of Gal_4:30 to Christians would have been entirely superfluous; no reader needed it, in order clearly to discern and deeply to feel the certainty of victory conveyed in Gal_4:30; hence Gal_4:31 would be halting and without force. No; Gal_4:31 begins a new section. Comp. Lachmann, de Wette, Ewald, Hofmann. The allegorical instruction, which from Gal_4:22 onwards Paul has given, comes to a close forcibly and appropriately with the triumphant language of Scripture in Gal_4:30; and now Paul will follow it up by the exhortation to stand fast in their Christian liberty (Gal_5:1). But first of all, as a basis for this exhortation, he prefixes to it the proposition—resulting from the previous instruction—which forms the “pith of the allegory” (Holsten), and exactly as such is fitted to be the theoretical principle placed at the head of the practical course of action to be required in the sequel, Gal_4:31. This proposition is then followed by τῇ ἐλευθερίᾳ ἡμᾶς Χριστὸς ἠλευθέρωσεν , Gal_5:1, which very forcibly serves as a medium of transition to the direct summons στήκετε οὖν . “Therefore, brethren,—seeing that our position is such as results from this allegory,—we are not children of a bond-woman (like the Jews), but of the free woman; for freedom Christ has made us free: stand therefore fast,” etc.